1997: A Presidential Call for Growth

When Arkansas’ Democratic Governor Bill Clinton ran for president in 1992, part of his education agenda was a little-known policy: charter schools.

That election was a three-way contest between incumbent Republican President George H.W. Bush, independent Ross Perot, and Clinton. Clinton’s support of the emerging charter schools policy supported differentiated his education agenda from Bush’s, which included a private school choice-based “G.I. Bill for Children.”

On the campaign trail Clinton visited the nation’s first charter school, City Academy in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Once in office, in 1994 Clinton supported a proposal from Minnesota Senator David Durenberger, a Republican, to create a federal Charter Schools Program that funds states to create and support charter schools. State legislative activity in the following years—1995 and 1996—resulted in the passage of 14 new charter schools laws.

In his 1997 State of the Union address, Clinton set an ambitious goal for charter schools growth as part of his Call to Action for American Education:

“[E]very state should give parents the power to choose the right public school for their children. Their right to choose will foster competition and innovation that can make public schools better. We should also make it possible for more parents and teachers to start charter schools, schools that set and meet the highest standards, and exist only as long as they do. Our plan will help America to create 3,000 of these charter schools by the next century — nearly seven times as there are in the country today — so that parents will have even more choices in sending their children to the best schools.”

By the end of his last term, the number of charter schools had grown from one to nearly 2,000 educating 448,000 students.[1]  Subsequent presidents followed Clinton’s support of charter schools—including President George W. Bush through the No Child Left Behind Act and President Barack Obama through the Race to the Top initiative—which has provided stable, bipartisan, long-term support for growth of the charter movement.